Hi ,

Today I began the discussion about establishing a Wikimedia Foundation affiliated user group around the topic of addressing the gender gap in Wikimedia Foundation projects. I see this as being an international organization where people from all over the world can work together on this common cause.

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Gender_gap_strategy_2013#Establishing_a_WMF-affiliated_user_group

The threshold for being recognized is pretty low., only 3 people, but I would not want to go for affiliation with less than 10 interested people. And I hope we can attract many many more.

I plan to discuss this in Berlin at the Diversity Conference but want to make it clear that the organization is open to every one interested in actively working on the topic. So please spread the word.

I put a sign up space in the thread so we can capture the initial interest that came out of this thread.

One of the key discussion will be the name of the group. So everyone put their thinking caps on so we can make this decision within the next month of so.

Sydney Poore

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 4:29 PM, Nathan <nawrich@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 16, 2013 at 4:11 PM, Sydney <sydney.poore@gmail.com> wrote:
> Yes, with the narrowing focus last year the community will need to take the
> lead. But from the meeting earlier this year it is clear that there
> definitely is talented people on staff at WMF who are more than willing to
> assist as their time permits.

That's unfortunate. I understood the narrowing focus to mean not
placing WMF offices and contractors around the world, or doing sort of
boots on the ground face to face outreach. Since usability initiatives
and some other programs are still ongoing, it seems like the gender
gap should've stayed on the table for direct involvement even if not
through the vehicle of the fellowship program. Too bad.

That said, there are chapters who receive hundreds of thousands of
dollars in funding from the FDC despite having objectively achieved
very little to date; certainly that means there is an opportunity
there for people with an interest in dedicating themselves full time
to this work to be compensated fairly through a funded WMF affiliate.

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